I've taken delivery of what I expect to be the one and only aircraft model I will own. Having just finished an excellent book on the French Resistance during World War Two (written by Matthew Cobb), I was taken by the stories of the intrepid pilots of the British Westland Lysanders and their often near-suicidal night flights to ferry in SOE agents and supplies, and get others back over to Britain. Painted black and flying at night, they dodged the German air patrols, landed in ploughed fields, dropped off their cargo and took on their return cargo in a seriously scary hurry, then took off again in the dark, heading back home to Britain. So many harrowing stories....

And so, instead of getting one of the usual fighter planes that most people quite understandably love, I decided if I was going to have one just model aircraft it would be a hard-working unsung hero of the war.

It didn't take long to deep-etch this quickly taken photo of the model and pop it onto a blue sky background, so I prefer to present it in this way (obviously it sits on a conventional model plane stand in my cabinet). The model itself is 1:72 by Corgi (formal name Westland Lysander MkIIIA (SD) – V9367, No 161 Squadron, February 1942). It's number 1355 in a limited run of 2010 models.

The model also comes with a large, black torpedo-shaped container for carrying deliveries (the usual stuff for the French resistance – weapons, explosives, radios) which is slung under the plane, but as it does nothing for the plane's looks I have left that black lump in the box. The rear canopy (over the rear-facing machine-gunner) also comes off, but the gunner looked cold with it off.

Last edited by Ozmac on Sat May 11, 2013 12:53 am, edited 4 times in total.

Nice post Ozmac - Lysander was a very interesting aircraft to model - Airfix used to have it in their series too. I am intrigued by the book you mention and will have a look for it.

I am currently on with building my second Heller 1/125 scale Airbus A380 in First Flight livery (first was for my nephew and was so impressed with it bought one for myself) and after that an Airbus A400M 1/72 scale Revell model - its massive - see here and for the same price as 1x diecast its a bargain

I have a stack of Airfix WW1 fighter aircraft to build - my grandfather was fighter pilot in that war and flew SE5a aircraft.

**Add** Found it on Amazon and ordered - thanks. Have been looking for a book on FR for some time (in English) as wife is French and have heard many stories through her family and seen the villages affected ...

You're absolutely right, Julio! The cheesy indoor lighting is an essential part of the fake look, and the little pilot inside the model does the rest.

The model was delivered mid-afternoon, I loved it as soon as I got it out of the box, so I put it on my office desk, turned on the halogen desk lamp and snapped away with my little mini digital camera. It was midway through doing that I then decided a quick-smart deep-etch & diorama was in order, and 10 minutes later it was done.

They warned me 1:72 scale planes don't stop at one, and after reading a great biography of early aviation pioneer Bert Hinkler, I just had to get one of the many planes he flew. The easiest to find turned out to be one I had a soft spot for anyway, the Sopwith Camel, and all Snoopy jokes aside, that's what I went looking for.

Ready-made 1:72 Sopwith Camels were thin on the ground (in the air?) but I did find this one built from a kit and sold cheaply enough on eBay. It's a bit rough around the edges but infinitely better than anything I could build, so I am happy to have it. My one major fudge in this case is that this model is the plane flown by Canadian Ace Roy Brown, and not by Hinkler (who never became a famous air ace in the war), but any Sopwith Camel would have done me, and I do believe Roy Brown was one hell of a guy, anyway. Edit: Roy Brown is the guy who was initially credited with the "kill" for shooting down the famous Red Baron Manfred von Richtofen, but since then it's thought the Red Baron was brought down my ground machine-gun fire from Aussies, as he was flying low over the Aussie entrenchments not long before he crashed and died. Roy Brown was, nevertheless, still a remarkable airman of that era.

Now, "who's Bert Hinkler?" I hear you ask. An Australian of German descent, he was an aviation-mad Aussie schoolboy when the Wright Brothers first flew, and by the age of 19 he (in 1911) had managed to build a glider which flew successfully several times. He started off as an airplane mechanic and stayed one for the next 7 years. He was in the UK when World War I started, joined the fledgling airforce as a mechanic and gunner and spent the next three years doing that. By late 1917 he had made it to Leiutenant and finally became a pilot and his first combat aircraft, flown in combat over Italy in 1918, was this plane, the tricky-to-fly but quite effective Sopwith Camel. The combination of its stubby wings and big radial engine made it an unstable but highly manoeuvrable thing, but Hinkler thrived it in as a pilot.

After the war he set countless solo long-distance records, the pinnacle of his achievements being the first to fly solo from England to Australia (in 15 days, in 1928). He was also the first to flow solo from Brazil to Senegal in Africa, crossing the South Atlantic alone. A national hero in Australia, he kept on flying in Europe and the US until he crashed and died over Italy while flying a Puss Moth, in 1933.

Last edited by Ozmac on Sun Sep 23, 2012 1:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, it's been a while since I have bought anything diecast, due to that common ailment known as unemployment. But now that the economic skies overhead have changed from dark clouds to patches of sunshine (with showers), enough work is trickling in that I can afford about $50 a month of frivolous extravagances (ie, diecast purchases) and so this is what I've blown my first 50 bucks worth on. Not cars, but nice old birds.

Herpa makes a good range of 1:500 scale diecast planes, and I've always wanted a Connie, a Super Constellation. There's one still flying every weekend at an air museum about 100km south of Sydney, and I've seen it in the air several times. What a beautiful plane.

And this dark and grainy photo is of a Douglas DC-3 Berlin Airlift plane, also a 1:500 Herpa (just 19 bucks!). As a kid in Sydney I remember them fondly, droning by so very slowly but steadily.

I love civilian planes for some reason. I have nothing against your Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mirages, Harriers and FA18s, but there's something about civilian planes that I like just a bit more. Next month my 50 bucks is going to buy a 1:500 Herpa Concorde (Air France, naturalment) and if I get lucky on eBay there's old German Junkers JU52s out there, trusty Dutch Fokker Friendships too.

Sooooo much bigger than the Junkers, yet still 1:500, a Herpa model of a Concorde. Though I'm a prop plane guy mostly, gotta have a Concorde. I checked out the prototype of the Concorde (I think it was at Bovington?) in the UK in 1986 – my memory is a bit hazy after all these years – and was blown away by how small and tube-like the Concorde was inside. That didn't stop me loving it from the outside though.